Author: Colin Dwyer

NPR Enlarge this image President Trump listens as Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg speaks at a joint news conference Wednesday. At an Oval Office meeting on immigration policy, Trump said the U.S. should want more people from countries like Norway, disparaging Haiti and what he called “shithole countries” in Africa. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images One day after President Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries,” adding that the U.S. should want immigrants from countries such as Norway rather than Haiti or El Salvador, the countries that came in for the president’s criticism...

NPR Enlarge this image Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month. On Sunday, Conyers announced he would be stepping down from his ranking position on the committee — though he continued to deny sexual misconduct allegations against him. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Drew Angerer/Getty Images Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has announced he is stepping down as ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers conveyed the news in a statement released Sunday by the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The announcement comes roughly a week after sexual misconduct...

GOOGLE NEWS President Trump waves to the crowd after his speech during the National Boy Scout Jamboree on Monday. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Updated at 4:49 p.m. ET The head of the Boy Scouts of America apologized Thursday to the organization’s members, telling them that the group did not intend to showcase the “political rhetoric” in President Trump’s speech to the National Jamboree earlier this week. “I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree. That was never our intent,” Michael Surbaugh, the...

GOOGLE NEWS Enlarge this image Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks to graduates at Bethune-Cookman University on Wednesday in Daytona Beach, Fla. For much of the address, she struggled to speak over boos and shouts from the crowd. John Raoux/AP hide caption toggle caption John Raoux/AP Updated at 1:45 p.m. ET Betsy DeVos spoke through waves of boos and shouted protests during her commencement speech at Bethune-Cookman University on Wednesday, delivering a celebratory address with what seemed at times to be grim-faced resolve. In the week and a half since the historically black university announced DeVos would be delivering the...

GOOGLE NEWS Enlarge this image Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images President Trump quietly signed legislation Thursday that rolls back an Obama-era rule protecting certain federal funds for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide legal abortions. That regulation, implemented in the waning days of the Obama administration, required that states pass along family-planning grants — regardless of whether the groups they’re passing them along to offer abortion services as well. The rule was intended to prevent states from withholding these grants from any organization “for reasons other than its ability to provide Title X services.” Now that the rule has...

NPR Chinese President Xi Jinping takes part in a ceremony in Helsinki on Wednesday. A day later, he flew to Florida for his first face-to-face meeting with President Trump. Vesa Moilanen/AFP/Getty Images It’s safe to say that few people expected the first face-to-face meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping to unfold this way. Halfway through the Chinese president’s visit to Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump announced to the world that he had ordered a missile strike on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for an apparent chemical attack by Bashar Assad’s regime. “It is in this vital...

Enlarge this image Alex Wong/Getty Images By a 57-43 margin, the Republican-led Senate voted Wednesday to repeal an Obama-era regulation designed to block certain mentally ill people from purchasing firearms. The vote, which approves a House resolution passed earlier this month, now sends the measure to the White House for President Trump’s signature. President Trump, who campaigned as a defender of gun rights and a friend of the National Rifle Association, is widely expected to sign the measure. The rule on the verge of rollback would have required the Social Security Administration to report the records of some mentally ill beneficiaries to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Those who have been deemed mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs — roughly 75,000 people — would have been affected by the rule, according to NPR’s Susan Davis. It was implemented by former President Obama after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which saw 20 students and six teachers killed at an elementary school by 20-year-old Adam Lanza. The Hill reports that the rule was set to take effect in December. Yet GOP lawmakers have argued that the regulation was needlessly heavy-handed, painting people with mental illnesses with too broad a brush and infringing on their constitutional rights. The Associated Press reports that Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a leading Republican critic of the rule, said it is filled with...